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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29413752">Telling The Bees</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Topaz_Eyes/pseuds/Topaz_Eyes'>Topaz_Eyes</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Elementary</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>3 Sentence Ficathon, Gen, Post-episode tag, Prompt Fic, telling the bees</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 11:35:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>817</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29413752</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Topaz_Eyes/pseuds/Topaz_Eyes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Joan carries out a request.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sherlock Holmes &amp; Joan Watson (Elementary)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Telling The Bees</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for Rthstewart’s <a href="https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/166704.html">Three Sentence Ficathon</a> using the prompt <i>Any, any, go tell the bees that I am gone</i> from Anonymous.  Post-episode tag for s7e12, “Reichenbach Falls.”  Originally posted <a href="https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/166704.html?thread=10059568#cmt10059568">here</a></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>With Sherlock’s letter stating his instructions in hand (the paper crumpled and ink more smudged than she cares to admit); with three rolls of black crepe paper in one coat pocket; and with a dispenser of cellophane tape and scissors in the other, Joan steadfastly climbs the stairs to the roof of the brownstone, where the bees have been hibernating in their winterized hives while dreaming of the coming spring.</p><p>Sherlock hadn’t had time to deliver a proper goodbye before enacting his solution of last resort with Odin Reichenbach, so he’d simply pressed his missive in her hand just before he walked out of the brownstone to his fateful meeting.  On reading it the first time, the morning after they’d confirmed Sherlock was missing and presumed drowned for all intents and purposes, Joan suspected he’d written it awhile ago, in a darker, more desperate time; but its message was still clear, and she was bound by friendship and fealty to deliver it.</p><p>She steels herself, then pushes open the top door to the roof and steps outside, shivering a little in the wind; she tugs her beret down over her ears, tightens her coat around her.  Following the directions she’d memorized, Joan withdraws the paper, tape, and scissors from her pockets, and begins to festoon the beehive boxes with curls of black crepe that catch and ripple in the breeze.  When she finishes, she stands back a moment with her hands in her pockets to admire her handiwork.</p><p>She then ponders how to break the news to her tiny, slumbering charges.  Sherlock left that task to her; ultimately she decides that directness is always the best approach, with bees as well as humans.  She knocks gently on the first hive box standing closest to her, and she swallows as she lays a hand on the side.</p><p>“I’m sorry to wake you –” she begins in a whisper.</p><p>But the words catch like barbs in her throat, and suddenly it seems so much harder to say this out loud.  Speaking it makes his absence real, and she doesn’t know if she can bear to hear herself admit the truth, even if it is only to the sleeping bees.</p><p>Yet these are her bees, too.  Sherlock had bestowed her name on them: <i>Euglassia watsonia</i>, the species that should not exist yet survives and thrives.  They deserve to know the truth going forward; they deserve to hear it from her.</p><p>“I’ve come to tell you, I thought you should know,” she starts again, her voice stronger.  “Sherlock is gone.  He left New York this morning.  I don’t know when or if he’ll return.”</p><p>She pauses.  <i>He may never come back</i>.  She wonders if she hears buzzing in the hive, if the bees are indeed stirring, or if it is only in her own ears.  Still, she soldiers on.</p><p>“Sherlock is gone, but you’re not to worry.  My name is Joan.  I will take care of you now.  I give you my word.”</p><p>She’s cared for Sherlock’s bees before, of course, he’d taught her in case he couldn’t be there to do it himself: when he’d moved to London after Mycroft left, when he’d relapsed, while he recovered from post-concussion syndrome.  Sherlock had always been a conscientious beekeeper; and he’d always returned, to the bees and to her, no matter how long he stayed away.  Until now; Joan had never expected that twice in her life she would become a mother to bees.</p><p>Joan repeats the ritual for each box in turn, and her voice does not waver in its message.  Instead she finds, to her own surprise, that she feels more at ease, that the words weigh less heavy in her heart every time she speaks them.</p><p>And perhaps that was the point: Sherlock’s request was meant as much for her as for the bees.</p><p>It strikes Joan that Sherlock has talked to his bees all along: all the hours spent alone on the roof after the beekeeping chores were done, confiding in his bees the secrets that for whatever reason he had not wanted her to be privy to.  She wonders what stories these bees would tell if they could talk; but she would not pry, either.</p><p>Besides, it would be nice, she thinks, to have confidants going forward these next weeks, months, and years, now that Sherlock is out of reach, possibly forever.  Even if they can’t speak to her, they will listen, and that is enough; in the end, they’ll see each other through.</p><p>The sun breaks through the clouds, and the breeze stops.  Spring’s not far off now, only weeks until the earth greens, the trees flower, and her bees poke their heads out of their hives to begin another year’s work.  Before Joan goes back downstairs, she makes these small creatures a promise.</p><p>“If – when – Sherlock comes home, I swear you’ll be the first to know.”</p>
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